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One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866-1928
A chronicle one of the harshest, most exploitative labor systems in American history
In his seminal study of convict leasing in the post-Civil War South, Matthew J. Mancini chronicles one of the harshest, most exploitative labor systems in American history. Devastated by war, bewildered by peace, and unprepared to confront the problems of prison management, Southern states sought to alleviate the need for cheap labor, a perceived rise in criminal behavior, and the bankruptcy of their state treasuries. Mancini describes the policy of leasing prisoners to individuals and corporations as one that, in addition to reducing prison populations and generating revenues, offered a means of racial subordination and labor discipline. He identifies commonalities that, despite the seemingly uneven enforcement of convict leasing across state lines, bound the South together for more than half a century in reliance on an institution of almost unrelieved brutality.
He describes the prisoners' daily existence, profiles the individuals who leased convicts, and reveals both the inhumanity of the leasing laws and the centrality of race relations in the establishment and perpetuation of convict leasing.
In considering the longevity of the practice, Mancini takes issue with the widespread notion that convict leasing was an aberration in a generally progressive history of criminal justice. In explaining its dramatic demise, Mancini contends that moral opposition was a distinctly minor force in the abolition of the practice and that only a combination of rising lease prices and years of economic decline forced an end to convict leasing in the South.
In his seminal study of convict leasing in the post-Civil War South, Matthew J. Mancini chronicles one of the harshest, most exploitative labor systems in American history. Devastated by war, bewildered by peace, and unprepared to confront the problems of prison management, Southern states sought to alleviate the need for cheap labor, a perceived rise in criminal behavior, and the bankruptcy of their state treasuries. Mancini describes the policy of leasing prisoners to individuals and corporations as one that, in addition to reducing prison populations and generating revenues, offered a means of racial subordination and labor discipline. He identifies commonalities that, despite the seemingly uneven enforcement of convict leasing across state lines, bound the South together for more than half a century in reliance on an institution of almost unrelieved brutality.
He describes the prisoners' daily existence, profiles the individuals who leased convicts, and reveals both the inhumanity of the leasing laws and the centrality of race relations in the establishment and perpetuation of convict leasing.
In considering the longevity of the practice, Mancini takes issue with the widespread notion that convict leasing was an aberration in a generally progressive history of criminal justice. In explaining its dramatic demise, Mancini contends that moral opposition was a distinctly minor force in the abolition of the practice and that only a combination of rising lease prices and years of economic decline forced an end to convict leasing in the South.
296 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1996
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May 10, 2019
Matthew Mancini’s account of American convict leasing, written in the 1990s, concludes with cold war triumphalism and the certainty that “the universe bends toward justice.” Time has not been kind to this conviction, nor to those convicted.
Mancini posits that prisoner leasing was not a “functional replacement” for slavery; that the Southern penal system swung between two poles: the first maintaining that the convict was a slave of the state, with no inherent rights the law was obliged to respect – the same as a chattel slave. The second held that a convict was still a citizen, with all the inherent rights thereof except those specifically denied by law. Mancini writes that the latter dominated Southern legal theory. But in practice, leasing became a substitute for slavery in essence, “by another name.” Eighteenth century Maryland, for example, based its plantation agriculture on imported white convict labor, precisely to avoid Virginia’s racialized chattel system. The theorized distinction between a substitute and a functional replacement is semantic more than practical.
Proof lies in the heaps of Mancini’s own evidence. Most Southern convicts were black: second-class citizens with restricted rights before conviction and sentencing; hence their higher incarceration rate in the first place. Placing them in the hands of private parties with little enforcement of state regulations guaranteed abuses of punishment, living conditions, food and health as surely as Georgia sunshine. Contractors subsequently stepped around the bad publicity of neo-slavery, letting the state furnish guards and provide food and clothing at public expense, thus quieting anti-slavery reformers in the short term.
Although often tweaked the system was never abolished, however, until pragmatism could weigh the cost-benefit of conscience. The burden of grafting officials, and bad publicity for investment-seeking elites, finally strangled its last gasp in the urban-industrial world of the 20th century. Yet nothing changed for the convicts themselves: Parchman Farm, Angola, and hundreds of county camps became public substitutes for privatized forced labor.
Overall – with reservations - this is a good and detailed account of the system in general outline, and state-by-state practice. Convict leasing may be one form of forced labor, as is slavery, peonage, indentured servitude, etc., with distinct outlines of its own. But the goal was to protect the fiction of freedom while denying it, through harsh and biased sentencing and exploiting the legally vulnerable; maintaining a social and racial hierarchy through the letter, not the spirit, of rights-based liberalism.
The rise of modern prison privatization reminds us that the past always lurks in the shadows, awaiting lapse of memory and vigilance - though now states subsidize for-profit contracting, as opposed to fee-paying contractors. A new substitute for convict leasing or segregation; slavery by yet another misleading name; democracy subverted as surely as in the “new Europe” of Mancini’s hopeful conclusion.
Mancini posits that prisoner leasing was not a “functional replacement” for slavery; that the Southern penal system swung between two poles: the first maintaining that the convict was a slave of the state, with no inherent rights the law was obliged to respect – the same as a chattel slave. The second held that a convict was still a citizen, with all the inherent rights thereof except those specifically denied by law. Mancini writes that the latter dominated Southern legal theory. But in practice, leasing became a substitute for slavery in essence, “by another name.” Eighteenth century Maryland, for example, based its plantation agriculture on imported white convict labor, precisely to avoid Virginia’s racialized chattel system. The theorized distinction between a substitute and a functional replacement is semantic more than practical.
Proof lies in the heaps of Mancini’s own evidence. Most Southern convicts were black: second-class citizens with restricted rights before conviction and sentencing; hence their higher incarceration rate in the first place. Placing them in the hands of private parties with little enforcement of state regulations guaranteed abuses of punishment, living conditions, food and health as surely as Georgia sunshine. Contractors subsequently stepped around the bad publicity of neo-slavery, letting the state furnish guards and provide food and clothing at public expense, thus quieting anti-slavery reformers in the short term.
Although often tweaked the system was never abolished, however, until pragmatism could weigh the cost-benefit of conscience. The burden of grafting officials, and bad publicity for investment-seeking elites, finally strangled its last gasp in the urban-industrial world of the 20th century. Yet nothing changed for the convicts themselves: Parchman Farm, Angola, and hundreds of county camps became public substitutes for privatized forced labor.
Overall – with reservations - this is a good and detailed account of the system in general outline, and state-by-state practice. Convict leasing may be one form of forced labor, as is slavery, peonage, indentured servitude, etc., with distinct outlines of its own. But the goal was to protect the fiction of freedom while denying it, through harsh and biased sentencing and exploiting the legally vulnerable; maintaining a social and racial hierarchy through the letter, not the spirit, of rights-based liberalism.
The rise of modern prison privatization reminds us that the past always lurks in the shadows, awaiting lapse of memory and vigilance - though now states subsidize for-profit contracting, as opposed to fee-paying contractors. A new substitute for convict leasing or segregation; slavery by yet another misleading name; democracy subverted as surely as in the “new Europe” of Mancini’s hopeful conclusion.
November 28, 2019
Fortunately for students of the history of Southern penology, one scholar took upon himself the task to research and write what remains the lone monograph on the convict-lease system of labor procurement and management. Matthew J. Mancini, the author of "One Dies, Get Another," teaches in the Dept. of American Studies at Saint Louis University, a Jesuit institution of higher learning. His doctorate is in American Studies from Emory University, his undergraduate from Fordham, another Jesuit university.
Jesuit institutions of higher learning are known for institutionalizing the central tenets of Ignatian Spirituality, including a belief in social justice and concern for the poor and marginalized. With his groundbreaking book, Mancini seems to mesh with this Ignatian humanitarian spirit, as his work addresses the marginalized convicts of the past and their a lack of social justice.
A note about the title: It comes from an anecdote from 1883 at the end of a convention of the National Prison Association. A Southern delegate, who leased prisoners, nostalgically compared slavery to convict lease: “Before the [Civil] war, we owned the negroes. If a man had a good negro, he could afford to keep him. But these convicts, we don’t own ‘em. One dies, get another.” When a convict died, others were readily available. This quote points to the high death rate and the abundant and free supply of prisoners and encapsulates much of the distinctiveness and inhumanity of the convict-lease system.
Mancini’s is the first and only full-length study of convict lease. His scope is regional, with chapters on Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennesse, Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas. However, he makes a regional sweep in order to distill from these separate systems those features that were common across the South. Thus, even though there are nine state chapters, the scope is yet regional, not state-centered.
When reviewing the abolitionist efforts to end convict-lease in each state, Mancini presents his philosophy of history. He proposes historical contingency as his principal historical element to explain the “end” of convict-lease. Mancini contends that historians too closely link the work of reformers and the historical transformations that occur subsequently in time. In other words, he believes that human agency is more at the mercy of “blind forces” --economic, for example --than as a singular and powerful creator and controller of historical events. His Jesuit background, perhaps?
Did the abolitionists and the Civil War end the enslavement of African Americans? Next came the neoslavery of convict-lease. Did the abolitionists and social reformers “cause” the end of convict-lease? The prisoners would not have noticed. They still experienced cruel conditions and exploitation, but in the subsequent regime, their oppression occurred at the hands of state governments and their chain gangs. In this sense (to modify Mancini’s title), “one inhumane system dies, get another.”
Jesuit institutions of higher learning are known for institutionalizing the central tenets of Ignatian Spirituality, including a belief in social justice and concern for the poor and marginalized. With his groundbreaking book, Mancini seems to mesh with this Ignatian humanitarian spirit, as his work addresses the marginalized convicts of the past and their a lack of social justice.
A note about the title: It comes from an anecdote from 1883 at the end of a convention of the National Prison Association. A Southern delegate, who leased prisoners, nostalgically compared slavery to convict lease: “Before the [Civil] war, we owned the negroes. If a man had a good negro, he could afford to keep him. But these convicts, we don’t own ‘em. One dies, get another.” When a convict died, others were readily available. This quote points to the high death rate and the abundant and free supply of prisoners and encapsulates much of the distinctiveness and inhumanity of the convict-lease system.
Mancini’s is the first and only full-length study of convict lease. His scope is regional, with chapters on Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennesse, Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas. However, he makes a regional sweep in order to distill from these separate systems those features that were common across the South. Thus, even though there are nine state chapters, the scope is yet regional, not state-centered.
When reviewing the abolitionist efforts to end convict-lease in each state, Mancini presents his philosophy of history. He proposes historical contingency as his principal historical element to explain the “end” of convict-lease. Mancini contends that historians too closely link the work of reformers and the historical transformations that occur subsequently in time. In other words, he believes that human agency is more at the mercy of “blind forces” --economic, for example --than as a singular and powerful creator and controller of historical events. His Jesuit background, perhaps?
Did the abolitionists and the Civil War end the enslavement of African Americans? Next came the neoslavery of convict-lease. Did the abolitionists and social reformers “cause” the end of convict-lease? The prisoners would not have noticed. They still experienced cruel conditions and exploitation, but in the subsequent regime, their oppression occurred at the hands of state governments and their chain gangs. In this sense (to modify Mancini’s title), “one inhumane system dies, get another.”
August 7, 2024
What a gut wrenching read. Of course, I want everyone to read every book, but honestly, the title of this book is enough to get the gist. Slavery by another name.
January 26, 2012
Slavery existed in America until 1928. An enlightening book and one that is once again relevant. With many municipalities looking to use inmate labor to replace a paid work force, One Dies, Get Another offers a grim reminder of the inhumanity of such a system.
September 18, 2011
Grim subject matter, needless to say. Well-done though!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews